Fifteen years after it last produced the play, Kuma Kahua brings back "Tea" by Velina Hasu Houston. The production is an intimate and excellently staged story of five Japanese war brides sharing common experiences 20 years after coming to America with their soldier husbands.

The setting is Junction City, Kan., an Army town on the outskirts of Fort Riley, where four women have come to share tea after the death of one of their number. The dead woman is Himiko Hamilton, a recent suicide and the first of the Japanese women to die in this strange place, so far from their homeland. It is a ceremonial visit, intended to facilitate the final journey of Himiko's spirit and to cement the sisterhood of her survivors.

But her spirit is far from peaceful and as the living women come to terms with their individual and common fates, Himiko's ghost circles the proceedings like a caged animal.

Kati Kuroda directs the all-woman cast and, despite their disparate age range, excellent ensemble performances unfold a story that is more bitter than sweet.

Tess Yong plays Himiko, long believed by her contemporaries to be slightly crazed because of her penchant for wearing a blond wig and crocheting toilet paper cozies. What is not commonly known is that the love disappeared from her marriage, replaced by beatings from a husband unable to set aside his combat memories. Ultimately, Himiko shot him dead with his own rifle and, after her runaway daughter's rape and murder, later turned the weapon on herself.

Yong brings a great deal of excitement to the role, prowling and snarling like a large cat, spitting outrage at herself and her world.

Setsuko (Blossom Lam) married a Negro and endured a life of double discrimination. Now widowed, she has vowed to remain in Kansas to ensure a place for her daughters in the only home they have known.

Teruko (Karen Kuioka Hironaga) is the peacemaker of the group, married to a large, loving Texan, devoted to her "honey pie" and their children, and oblivious by choice to her own marginalization in her larger world.

Atsuko (Denise-Aiko Chinen) is the most rigidly and fastidiously Japanese, lording it over the other women because her husband is a Japanese-American from California, despite the fact that he does not share her old-country rectitude.

Chizuye (Christine Yano) is the widow of a Mexican-American soldier, childless, and the most Americanized of the group, toughly forging a business while working to lose her accent and demand her rights as an American citizen.

As the women fuss with the tea things and clean Himiko's living room, they share their histories through flashbacks and small revelations.

Ultimately, unable to return to Japan, unable to fully integrate into American life, and misunderstood by their husbands and children, they acknowledge that their best support comes from each other.

That realization allows them to soothe Himiko's spirit as well as their own and to finish the play on more solid personal footing. It is a satisfying conclusion to a provocative problem play and an excellent production.